Guide wrote:All things that are now once were "not yet". Everything "then" comes before everything as it "now" is. Ergo, it is pointless to assign causation, since that would be to pick a detail out of the whole of what came before.

That in physics one speaks of local causality shows a failure of physics in the light of this reasoned law. Ergo, its falling back on probabilities and accidents.

Causality is false, since there is no possibility of asking about it. All things, the whole past, become all things, the whole now. Nothing can be carved out and named other than "all things" as those things that, each one, belong to the whole of the past.

"On my plate is a pile of food. It is illogical to take a bite unless I can stuff it all in my face at once."

Almost everything some members of the group write has the form: I don't get it, therefore it must be nonsense. But, the "I don't get it" never occurs to them, they lack the self insight. Instead: what is conscience is only: it is nonsense.

...all I am basically interested in is the extent to which this point reflects some measure of human autonomy. And, if it does, what are the existential implications germane to that which is of most interest to me: how ought one to live in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods?

It's fun to discover how one ought to live because invariably it's discovered that one ought to live in a way that is fun, otherwise what is the purpose of living? "Fun" is just a placeholder for the purposeless.

Of course "fun" here [in an essentially meaningless No God world] is no less an existential contraption.

No, I don't think it's either existential nor a contraption, but the opposite of. It's the non-existence of a contraption. It's complete mindlessness and complete lack of purpose. It's not a tool to employ mindlessness, but the absence of tools.

What is construed to be "fun" for one particular "I", may well be anything but "fun" for another.

True, but the condition of purposelessness is the same for each unique activity.

So we are still faced with estsablishing rules of behavior in any particular human community such that these rules become the existential embodiment of one or another complex combination of 1] right makes might 2] might makes right and 3] moderation, negotiation and compromise.

I'm not sure the rule of "no rules" is itself a rule if no thought is ever given to the establishment of such a rule. One who lives without rules never considers whether there should be rules.

Which, from my frame of mind, are embedded historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

I've no idea what dasein is.

But then this part:

Now, if "human freedom" here is essentially a self-delusion rooted in a mind rooted in a brain rooted in laws immutably applicable to all matter, then nothing that any of us post here was ever going to be anything other than that which it could only ever have been: what in fact it is. Period.

I have a different comment this time around. I'm inclined to believe that free will exists to the extent that it's only restrained by probability of outcome instead of "set-in-stone" determination. The "will" is a desire that is manufactured of what exists "now" as a feedback in influencing (but not determining) the outcome of what will exist in the future.

I think there is a will and I think it has certain freedoms since nothing is 100% determined. The will is an illusion to the extent that it's a product of the stuff in this universe instead of being something abstractly and objectively real (objectively real is an oxymoron anyway).

Serendipper wrote:Laws? That's an objective thing, right? Laws require an authority to enforce, but what happens in nature just happens and if it happens regularly, we presuppose they are laws. If the universe is inherently random and we rewind it to the beginning, it would almost certainly unfold in some other way. It's the lack of purpose that gives the universe purpose. If everything had a purpose; a destiny; a determination, then what would the purpose be for having the show? It would be a fatuous waste of energy and much easier to have had nothing.

Yes, this is one way in which to think about it. But there are hundreds and hundreds of other ways in turn. And, to the best of my knowledge, none of us are able to demonstrate that 1] their own assessment reflects an optimal understanding of the "human condition" or that 2] their assessment here and now is in fact the embodiment of an autonomous freedom to choose this assessment over any other.

I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws. I'm not even sure duality itself, which is the foundation of everything, is even a law outside of this universe. Maybe there could be triality universes and that would be the law of the land, so to speak. What we call "laws" are really "consistently observed random outcomes".

Then we go from there to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.

But [admittedly] part of my psychology [rooted in dasein] has predisposed [driven] me to pursue polemics. And part of this is "fun" in the sense that deconstructing objectivists is "entertainment" for me.

Some of these folks have spent literally years constructing these complex and convoluted "intellectual contraptions". Things like "value ontology". Then they bump into me and I start in on tinkering with them. Maybe even take them apart.

Serendipper wrote:But is that really fun or vanity? Or is vanity fun? Is playing the game fun or is winning fun because that's part of a larger game?

How on earth could I possibly discern with any degree of precision where one stops and the other begins? If I construe "I" here as a propoundly problematinc existential contraption, there seems to be no way in which I can get around this. No way in which to acquire an objective understanding of my own motivations and intentions. That would seem to be all scrambled up in the enormously complex interplay of all the variables from all the experiences I have ever had/known going back to my birth.

That's a darn good answer, but it still seems there is a difference between the purposeful and purposeless. Can we be purposeful for a purposeless reason? Why do we want to improve? No matter what mark you think you're leaving on the world, the world is going to end which makes everything kinda irrelevant. At the end of the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. Yet here we are: trying to improve ourselves with some overarching purpose in mind. Is that because the delusion of self-improvement is fun? I, for one, don't know what to do with myself if I'm not working towards some goal because I'm a product of my raising and my culture that insists I always be productive.

Serendipper wrote:If you truly feel there is no "right thing to do", then what you do cannot be predicated on what is "right". You just do what you do because that is what you do. Self reflection on the matter is taking an engineering view of the universe that everything must have a purpose.

And yet, over and again, I note that even this assumption is no less an existential contraption.

I think the existential contraption is in trying to understand anything: it's the gnosia instead of the agnosia (conceptual vs the nonconceptual (faith)). Do you beat your heart by existential contraption? You have no concept (gnosia) how you beat your heart, but you just do it (agnosia). Likewise in living.

There may well be the right thing to do.

What's right is relative to a goal, which is arbitrary.

There may well be a God.

If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe. Things that exist relative to us cannot exist outside this universe. Things outside this universe could not be things we could interact with or have knowledge of; if we could, those things would not be outside our universe.

There may well be a deontological philosophical assessment out there that I have just not come across yet. There may well be a way to determine if this exchange itself is only ever as it could have been.

I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

barbarianhorde wrote:"I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws."

Where did you come up with that law? I mean determination? I mean er

It just occurred to me as I was writing. It's not a law that there are no laws, as there certainly could be, but in order to have a law, something would have to enforce the law.

It would take me a while to explain why having a law would undermine having anything. The point is the pointlessness because how could an optimal solution be found if restrictions were placed upon the form the solution should take? So absolute lawlessness is a requirement for any truth to manifest.

barbarianhorde wrote:"I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws."

Where did you come up with that law? I mean determination? I mean er

It just occurred to me as I was writing. It's not a law that there are no laws, as there certainly could be, but in order to have a law, something would have to enforce the law.

Unless it is a self enforcing law... something nature enforces upon itself?It could have for a cause only that no other possibility is ever as likely to occur. I agree that there can not be absolute laws that aren't touched by existence.

It would take me a while to explain why having a law would undermine having anything. The point is the pointlessness because how could an optimal solution be found if restrictions were placed upon the form the solution should take? So absolute lawlessness is a requirement for any truth to manifest.

Definitely truth can't come as an effect of law unless the law is true. But I wonder isn't truth a law?

Anyway explain it if you will because I am an anarchist.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

barbarianhorde wrote:"I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws."

Where did you come up with that law? I mean determination? I mean er

It just occurred to me as I was writing. It's not a law that there are no laws, as there certainly could be, but in order to have a law, something would have to enforce the law.

Unless it is a self enforcing law... something nature enforces upon itself?

Yes but I don't call that a law. I believe what happens, happens as a result of what happened prior. It's not a law, but a probabilistic outcome favored by prior conditions. For instance the first life probably could not reproduce. Probably, it popped into existence and died a bazillion times and probably that is happening today as well. Clearly reproduction is an advantage since the lifeform is not as reliant upon random chance to exist, but this advantage isn't a law, but the most probable outcome. There is nothing insisting reproduction be an advantage, but it just was.

There is also no law saying heat must flow from the hot object to the cold, but it's astronomically unlikely that heat would ever flow from the cold to the hot.

Video about that

It would take me a while to explain why having a law would undermine having anything. The point is the pointlessness because how could an optimal solution be found if restrictions were placed upon the form the solution should take? So absolute lawlessness is a requirement for any truth to manifest.

Definitely truth can't come as an effect of law unless the law is true. But I wonder isn't truth a law?

Anyway explain it if you will because I am an anarchist.

I don't think truth can be a law because a law would exist before the truth could be determined. Truth is an effect; a determination; a result and not a driving force insisting things be so. The sun doesn't rise because it's 6am, but it's often true that the sun does rise at that time. Truth is the result and not the cause.

Truth is a property of a concept, and truth itself is a concept rather than an actual thing, so truth is a concept of a concept, which is second-order fiction. We can only think in terms of concepts which aren't reality, but what is reality can't be conceptualized, but we allude to what is real with concepts. I forgot who it was in particular, but one of those fancy-pants chinese sages said "Those who know, don't say; those who say, don't know." It's just illustrative that what is real can't be conceptualized (cut into pieces, quantized, abstracted and still maintain relevancy). Whatever is, just is, and there is no underlying force determining it because if there were, the whole show would be pointless. And that's the point that would take me a long time to articulate.

An analogy is a news article with a comments section. Any news that doesn't have comments is liable to be fake news because it's the unrestricted comments that substantiate truth. As soon as censorship takes hold, we have no mechanism to guarantee truth. As soon as someone asserts a truth and therefore censors those who disagree, the truth that is asserted can never be substantiated. It is only when there are no laws (restrictions) that truth can manifest as truth.

Likewise with the universe: if we first start with a law presupposing how things should be, then truth can never be known. Truth will always be relative to that first condition, which was the law. And so what would be the point of having a law then? If having a law taints our data, then why have it? What if we have a law that all coin flips must land heads? What would be the point of flipping the coin? And if we do flip the coin, then why have the law? So if there were laws, there would be no point to anything since the point to everything is to discover what we don't already know.... not to presuppose and become a lifeless mechanism in a deterministic show which is completely pointless.

Serendipper wrote:Yes but I don't call that a law. I believe what happens, happens as a result of what happened prior. It's not a law, but a probabilistic outcome favored by prior conditions.

Okay, but isn't there still a kind of law in the fact that things don't tend to follow from things that are happening afterward, or at the same time? Also, what is the difference between a law and a rule? But as a rule a happens from b, but not because it is against the rules to do something else. I think Im with you.

For instance the first life probably could not reproduce. Probably, it popped into existence and died a bazillion times and probably that is happening today as well.

Well, that actually explains transgender. A lifeforms popped into life without the proclivity to reproduce, but with the proclivity to do something wildly different with its sex organs.

I don't think truth can be a law because a law would exist before the truth could be determine

It still seems truth would have to exist before a law can really apply, as a backbone of laws. But I agree that if you want to reasonably argue about truth you need to state some specific case and argue that it is a true case. On the other hand The Truth can maybe be accomplished in some way, like Jesus said I am the truth and the way and the life, I thought that was a badass statement for sure and then people took this for true and actually lived their lives because of it, every decision was based on it, even to horrific deaths like that dude who wanted to be crucified upside down because he wasn't worthy of undergoing the same punishment as Jesus. Thats totally insane but true. I am more "troubled" lets say by these questions than more theoretical truth value computations, I wonder why the hell things are true that don't seem very likely at all. Maybe truth is more of a how than a what or why. My uncle alway use to say the most fundamental truths are methods. Badass methods, thats what Id trust most, tried and true. Maybe trust and truth are actually the same. But then thats a law, yeah that was what Hume was about I guess but whats the point of thinking if you don't ever expect to arrive at a concrete rule or something, something you can use? But again then law is an accomplishment and not a condition. Someone also said that God is an accomplishment. It sounds like all order is admirable. Our solar system was totally lawlessly forged, and now it is the law that gives flow to the waters and changing sunlight. And in this cosmic constitution small lawless creatures can pop up that relate to the original lawless precondition.

Maybe the only way something can follow from lawlessness is by setting itself as the law. Like a straight line escaping a black hole. But how can that happen?

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

Maybe law is what happens when more than one beings are forced to occupy the same space. Not like, exactly the same space, but say the same room or the same pool of gravity where they need to be influencing the others without being destroyed. Or whenever that manages to happen, the law is what made it happen. So law is a balance.

That means law is time. Regular progression happens only inside a law. So economic growth only happens within a law and I guess crime doesn't pay because it has a cut up timeline unless the crime sets the law, then all the pay from time comes into the timeless crime's hands.

Its Sunday, if youre wondering.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

Serendipper wrote:Yes but I don't call that a law. I believe what happens, happens as a result of what happened prior. It's not a law, but a probabilistic outcome favored by prior conditions.

Okay, but isn't there still a kind of law in the fact that things don't tend to follow from things that are happening afterward, or at the same time?

Oh you mean a law governing the direction of time? If time went backwards, how could you tell? If B comes from A, then the sequence of events is A then B, but if you experience it backwards, it would still be that B came from A. Think about it... if you went back in time, you'd have no knowledge of the fact that you went back in time. So at timeslice B you'd say "Ah, B happened!" then at timeslice A you'd say "I wonder what will result from A".

There is no causality because in order for there to be, you'd have to explain how one thing affects another thing. But if one thing can affect another thing, then they are not 2 things, but 1 thing. And if there are no things, then there is no causality. If there is no causality, then your question has no meaning.

What does "happening afterward" mean? After what? After a moment in time? Well how long is that? So we draw the line thinner and thinner until we find there is no time in which for anything to happen. Who was the guy (zeno or meno) who argued it was impossible for an arrow to ever hit a target because if the arrow is in motion, then it doesn't exist since there is no place in time where it is. Or something like that.

Also, what is the difference between a law and a rule?

Just the connotation or context. It depends how you use the words.

But both laws and rules are something enforced by authority. If there is no authority, then what we think are laws or rules are really just observed regularities.

For instance the first life probably could not reproduce. Probably, it popped into existence and died a bazillion times and probably that is happening today as well.

Well, that actually explains transgender. A lifeforms popped into life without the proclivity to reproduce, but with the proclivity to do something wildly different with its sex organs.

Life that pops into existence wouldn't have sex organs. That's what I'm saying... the organs would have to be selected for. Reproduction itself would have to be selected for because it competed better than life that didn't reproduce.

The latest hypothesis is that life formed from rocks and almost certainly still forms today in the same way. The clay particles that break off of rocks have the perfect structure for self-assembly of molecules... they provide a little tunnels for molecules to bounce around in and form chains. And plants eat rocks ya know. Then animals eat plants.

I don't think truth can be a law because a law would exist before the truth could be determine

It still seems truth would have to exist before a law can really apply, as a backbone of laws.

Oh I see what you're saying... there would have to exist something to make a law from. But existence itself is relative. Nothing exist on its own in the middle of nothing because it would have no context or contrast to give it meaning. Every truth must be relative to something and even that truth must be relative and so on forever. We're looking for the most fundamental thing and we're never going to find it because we can't use the thing we're looking for to find the thing we're looking for. That's what the chinese describe as searching for the ass you're riding or putting your glasses on so you can find your glasses.

But I agree that if you want to reasonably argue about truth you need to state some specific case and argue that it is a true case. On the other hand The Truth can maybe be accomplished in some way, like Jesus said I am the truth and the way and the life,

I think what Jesus was referring to was the names of the temples or something like that. Each were named "the way, the truth, the life". You have to be on guard for distortions in the bible.

I thought that was a badass statement for sure and then people took this for true and actually lived their lives because of it, every decision was based on it, even to horrific deaths like that dude who wanted to be crucified upside down because he wasn't worthy of undergoing the same punishment as Jesus. Thats totally insane but true. I am more "troubled" lets say by these questions than more theoretical truth value computations, I wonder why the hell things are true that don't seem very likely at all.

Maybe truth is more of a how than a what or why. My uncle alway use to say the most fundamental truths are methods.

I resonate with that since I can't remember the quadratic equation, but I remember how to derive it. The method is more important than the triviality. Once I learn the method, I don't need the facts since I can regenerate them.

But then thats a law, yeah that was what Hume was about I guess but whats the point of thinking if you don't ever expect to arrive at a concrete rule or something, something you can use? But again then law is an accomplishment and not a condition. Someone also said that God is an accomplishment. It sounds like all order is admirable. Our solar system was totally lawlessly forged, and now it is the law that gives flow to the waters and changing sunlight. And in this cosmic constitution small lawless creatures can pop up that relate to the original lawless precondition.

You got it!

Maybe the only way something can follow from lawlessness is by setting itself as the law. Like a straight line escaping a black hole. But how can that happen?

Energy radiates from black holes as hawking radiation. Actually, it's very hard to enter a black hole since most things are accelerated, ripped apart, and flung across the universe. To actually enter inside, you'd have to be on a straight line trajectory with the center and have a lot of luck not to get knocked off course.

But yeah, laws exist because there are no laws saying otherwise. If we're in the jungle, the biggest guy makes the law. The solar system formed of no laws and now it's the law. It's the golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules.

Okay, but isn't there still a kind of law in the fact that things don't tend to follow from things that are happening afterward, or at the same time?

Oh you mean a law governing the direction of time? If time went backwards, how could you tell? If B comes from A, then the sequence of events is A then B, but if you experience it backwards, it would still be that B came from A. Think about it... if you went back in time, you'd have no knowledge of the fact that you went back in time. So at timeslice B you'd say "Ah, B happened!" then at timeslice A you'd say "I wonder what will result from A".

Yes but all this what you say is still in the form of this, therefore that. Apparently we can do that, conclude that if one thing A is the case, then another thing B is aso the case but yet another thing X is not. For me it is hard to not see any laws, when we practice logic. Like if a pocket the 8 ball, it is not because I afterwards collected 25 bucks, but because I was arranging my force in a certain way through the cue.

It is as if the words if, then, because (etc) can't be used in a sentence if I want to avoid relying on laws.

There is no causality because in order for there to be, you'd have to explain how one thing affects another thing. But if one thing can affect another thing, then they are not 2 things, but 1 thing. And if there are no things, then there is no causality. If there is no causality, then your question has no meaning.

But the same thing happens here, when you say because. You say that fact that there is no causality has a cause.

What does "happening afterward" mean? After what? After a moment in time? Well how long is that? So we draw the line thinner and thinner until we find there is no time in which for anything to happen. Who was the guy (zeno or meno) who argued it was impossible for an arrow to ever hit a target because if the arrow is in motion, then it doesn't exist since there is no place in time where it is. Or something like that.

It seems he was ahead of Heisenberg. But Heraclitus would say yeah well things change. Maybe shoot an arrow into into a target to prove it.

Also, what is the difference between a law and a rule?

Just the connotation or context. It depends how you use the words.

But both laws and rules are something enforced by authority. If there is no authority, then what we think are laws or rules are really just observed regularities.

Life that pops into existence wouldn't have sex organs. That's what I'm saying... the organs would have to be selected for. Reproduction itself would have to be selected for because it competed better than life that didn't reproduce.

What if authority comes into existence because of the way nature is everything so also aggression and will and law. Authority always seems to opt up, like life.Regularities are called laws in science, but in justice laws are not at all indicating regularities, only a will.

The latest hypothesis is that life formed from rocks and almost certainly still forms today in the same way. The clay particles that break off of rocks have the perfect structure for self-assembly of molecules... they provide a little tunnels for molecules to bounce around in and form chains. And plants eat rocks ya know. Then animals eat plants.

Thats very cool. Where can I study this?

Oh I see what you're saying... there would have to exist something to make a law from. But existence itself is relative. Nothing exist on its own in the middle of nothing because it would have no context or contrast to give it meaning. Every truth must be relative to something and even that truth must be relative and so on forever. We're looking for the most fundamental thing and we're never going to find it because we can't use the thing we're looking for to find the thing we're looking for. That's what the chinese describe as searching for the ass you're riding or putting your glasses on so you can find your glasses.

Well but Relativity from Einstein is not really relative to other truths, or is it actually relative to some truth that says that things are not relative?

But I agree that if you want to reasonably argue about truth you need to state some specific case and argue that it is a true case. On the other hand The Truth can maybe be accomplished in some way, like Jesus said I am the truth and the way and the life,

I think what Jesus was referring to was the names of the temples or something like that. Each were named "the way, the truth, the life". You have to be on guard for distortions in the bible.

Well check this out.

John 14:6

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

think about it. He said I am the truth and did badass things, and because he was so badass, people thought "okay so this is true. Lets go!" (then this became truth raining down on people like hail)Because they alway wanted to know the truth, because having truth is power. You can out smart people if you have truth, or get to to the important places before the others who don't know truth.

Yeah but tell that to power. People always come to power by denying what you say. Why is lies so much more efficient than truth?Why is the monotheistic god ruling over the fossil fuels? Dafucc is that?

Maybe truth is more of a how than a what or why. My uncle alway use to say the most fundamental truths are methods.

I resonate with that since I can't remember the quadratic equation, but I remember how to derive it. The method is more important than the triviality. Once I learn the method, I don't need the facts since I can regenerate them.

Yeah thats deep. Methods get things done. Always proud of my uncle. He works on trains. I mean not on the train, he is in engines. Must feel good to ride an engine you put together from sheer logic. He always aggravated my grandfather who didn't believe that things are better because of science, took cold baths and when he lost his hunting license he became vegetarian and cultivated beautiful garden. But thats also method.

I wonder, is the seasons, the way heat and moisture are distributed over time, also a method? Because it brings forth plants, and allows for all this complex lawless machinery. Anyway lets fuck laws and hail method.

Or let it be your own authority at least.Trust can be an appeal to oneself. Okay I trust this is going to go well, so Ill just do the best Ill be able to and its going to be fine. Thats the only trust I ever really had that was proven true. I dont "trust" that the Sun comes up. I just am not surprised when it does.

But then thats a law, yeah that was what Hume was about I guess but whats the point of thinking if you don't ever expect to arrive at a concrete rule or something, something you can use? But again then law is an accomplishment and not a condition. Someone also said that God is an accomplishment. It sounds like all order is admirable. Our solar system was totally lawlessly forged, and now it is the law that gives flow to the waters and changing sunlight. And in this cosmic constitution small lawless creatures can pop up that relate to the original lawless precondition.

You got it!

Its a good universe to live in.

Maybe the only way something can follow from lawlessness is by setting itself as the law. Like a straight line escaping a black hole. But how can that happen?

Energy radiates from black holes as hawking radiation. Actually, it's very hard to enter a black hole since most things are accelerated, ripped apart, and flung across the universe. To actually enter inside, you'd have to be on a straight line trajectory with the center and have a lot of luck not to get knocked off course.

Yeah I don't think straight lines exist inside of black holes. But also no laws.By the way if blackholes get created by a lot of stellar mass collapsing, then they are really well balanced out through spacetime for not crashing into each other and sucking all mass into a giant hole.

But yeah, laws exist because there are no laws saying otherwise. If we're in the jungle, the biggest guy makes the law. The solar system formed of no laws and now it's the law. It's the golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules.

Great discussion.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

Okay, but isn't there still a kind of law in the fact that things don't tend to follow from things that are happening afterward, or at the same time?

Oh you mean a law governing the direction of time? If time went backwards, how could you tell? If B comes from A, then the sequence of events is A then B, but if you experience it backwards, it would still be that B came from A. Think about it... if you went back in time, you'd have no knowledge of the fact that you went back in time. So at timeslice B you'd say "Ah, B happened!" then at timeslice A you'd say "I wonder what will result from A".

Yes but all this what you say is still in the form of this, therefore that. Apparently we can do that, conclude that if one thing A is the case, then another thing B is aso the case but yet another thing X is not. For me it is hard to not see any laws, when we practice logic. Like if a pocket the 8 ball, it is not because I afterwards collected 25 bucks, but because I was arranging my force in a certain way through the cue.

It is as if the words if, then, because (etc) can't be used in a sentence if I want to avoid relying on laws.

Communication functions within laws (restrictions, boundaries, rules). If I don't follow the rules of language (if, then, else), then I can't convey any concepts. It's not that the laws of language are being enforced by an authority, but if I didn't follow them, communication would break down. Actually, if the laws of communication were indeed laws, I wouldn't be able to break them. So grammar is more of a construct for attainment of a goal rather than a law. It's as if we woke up one day and realized that if we put restraints on things, such as a flowing stream, we can guide the water for a goal. It's an idea that happened to come about as an artifact of what had existed previously.

There is no causality because in order for there to be, you'd have to explain how one thing affects another thing. But if one thing can affect another thing, then they are not 2 things, but 1 thing. And if there are no things, then there is no causality. If there is no causality, then your question has no meaning.

But the same thing happens here, when you say because. You say that fact that there is no causality has a cause.

That's just an artifact of argumentation. There isn't a cause of no causality for the reason (because) that there is nothing that could be a cause. Unless you're saying a cause can be a lack of a cause, but the lack of a cause is a state of nonexistence, emptiness, nothingness and how can nothing be something? Are things that do not exist, existent as things that do not exist? Is the nonexistence of a unicorn an existent thing?

What does "happening afterward" mean? After what? After a moment in time? Well how long is that? So we draw the line thinner and thinner until we find there is no time in which for anything to happen. Who was the guy (zeno or meno) who argued it was impossible for an arrow to ever hit a target because if the arrow is in motion, then it doesn't exist since there is no place in time where it is. Or something like that.

It seems he was ahead of Heisenberg. But Heraclitus would say yeah well things change. Maybe shoot an arrow into into a target to prove it.

An immediate concern is why Zeno is justified in assuming that the arrow is at rest during any instant. It follows immediately if one assumes that an instant lasts 0s: whatever speed the arrow has, it will get nowhere if it has no time at all. But what if one held that the smallest parts of time are finite—if tiny—so that a moving arrow might actually move some distance during an instant? One way of supporting the assumption—which requires reading quite a lot into the text—starts by assuming that instants are indivisible. Then suppose that an arrow actually moved during an instant. It would be at different locations at the start and end of the instant, which implies that the instant has a ‘start’ and an ‘end’, which in turn implies that it has at least two parts, and so is divisible, contrary to our assumption. (Note that this argument only establishes that nothing can move during an instant, not that instants cannot be finite.)

So then, nothing moves during any instant, but time is entirely composed of instants, so nothing ever moves. A first response is to point out that determining the velocity of the arrow means dividing the distance traveled in some time by the length of that time. But—assuming from now on that instants have zero duration—this formula makes no sense in the case of an instant: the arrow travels 0m in the 0s the instant lasts, but 0/0 m/s is not any number at all. Thus it is fallacious to conclude from the fact that the arrow doesn’t travel any distance in an instant that it is at rest; whether it is in motion at an instant or not depends on whether it travels any distance in a finite interval that includes the instant in question.

Life that pops into existence wouldn't have sex organs. That's what I'm saying... the organs would have to be selected for. Reproduction itself would have to be selected for because it competed better than life that didn't reproduce.

What if authority comes into existence because of the way nature is everything so also aggression and will and law. Authority always seems to opt up, like life.Regularities are called laws in science, but in justice laws are not at all indicating regularities, only a will.

I mean objective authority (god) and not authority that is a product of what existed prior. If you're positing a law of nature, a fundamental law that cannot be broken, then there would have to be a god to enforce it. If there is no god to enforce it, then the law is just a happening, consequence, artifact, "a whatever". It may seem like a law because of its consistency, but it just is and isn't something that is enforced.

The latest hypothesis is that life formed from rocks and almost certainly still forms today in the same way. The clay particles that break off of rocks have the perfect structure for self-assembly of molecules... they provide a little tunnels for molecules to bounce around in and form chains. And plants eat rocks ya know. Then animals eat plants.

Thats very cool. Where can I study this?

That's cool that you think it's cool!

Start at about 27:30 or just watch the whole thing

Pay particular attention at 28:45. That's the bit I'm on about and why I think life must be popping into existence all time, but it can't reproduce, so it just lives and dies unnoticed. I'm a panvitalist who believes there is no distinction between life and nonlife. Life doesn't come from nonlife and if life exists, it's all alive, but with varying degrees of complexity. Whatever it is that makes us alive is native to this universe and isn't something conjured into existence like magic because some non-living junk happened to arrange itself just so; no the life property must be inherent to everything.

Oh I see what you're saying... there would have to exist something to make a law from. But existence itself is relative. Nothing exist on its own in the middle of nothing because it would have no context or contrast to give it meaning. Every truth must be relative to something and even that truth must be relative and so on forever. We're looking for the most fundamental thing and we're never going to find it because we can't use the thing we're looking for to find the thing we're looking for. That's what the chinese describe as searching for the ass you're riding or putting your glasses on so you can find your glasses.

Well but Relativity from Einstein is not really relative to other truths, or is it actually relative to some truth that says that things are not relative?

Existence has no meaning outside of relativity. It's not Einstein's relativity, but epistemological relativity. If you say something exists, what do you mean? If you think about it long enough, you'll discover that existence is always relational. Something only exists as part of, as a function of, inside of, outside of, or somehow in relation to something else. There is no such thing as exclusive and abstract existence. Eventually it will occur to you to ask what the universe exists in relation to and to that question I'll just say "I have no idea" lol. I suppose it can only be an infinite regression of some sort.

James used to say that something can only be considered existent if it affects something else, which is another way of saying the same thing. If something cannot affect this universe, then it doesn't exist in relation to this universe.

But I agree that if you want to reasonably argue about truth you need to state some specific case and argue that it is a true case. On the other hand The Truth can maybe be accomplished in some way, like Jesus said I am the truth and the way and the life,

I think what Jesus was referring to was the names of the temples or something like that. Each were named "the way, the truth, the life". You have to be on guard for distortions in the bible.

Well check this out.

John 14:6

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

think about it. He said I am the truth and did badass things, and because he was so badass, people thought "okay so this is true. Lets go!" (then this became truth raining down on people like hail)Because they alway wanted to know the truth, because having truth is power. You can out smart people if you have truth, or get to to the important places before the others who don't know truth.

He said that because the Jews had temples or doorways or something that one had to pass through to get to the holy of holies.

I managed to dig this up:

The foundation for all of the work we will present on this subject is based upon the, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” statement made by Jesus. What we have discovered is that these names, (the way, the truth and the life), are the names used to identify the entry ways into the Tabernacle chambers. “The Way,” for example is the name of the gate that leads into the Tabernacle Courtyard. “The Truth” is the name of the door into the Holy Place, and in like manner, “the Life,” is the passage into the Most Holy place of God.https://possessthevision.wordpress.com/ ... abernacle/

So when Jesus said that, everyone knew what he meant (and it probably pissed them off). He is the only doorway through which one can enter into the holy of holies.

Yeah but tell that to power. People always come to power by denying what you say. Why is lies so much more efficient than truth?

Lies have incentive to propagate. Mark Twain said a lie can travel the earth while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

Why is the monotheistic god ruling over the fossil fuels? Dafucc is that?

Not sure what you mean.

Maybe truth is more of a how than a what or why. My uncle alway use to say the most fundamental truths are methods.

I resonate with that since I can't remember the quadratic equation, but I remember how to derive it. The method is more important than the triviality. Once I learn the method, I don't need the facts since I can regenerate them.

Yeah thats deep. Methods get things done. Always proud of my uncle. He works on trains. I mean not on the train, he is in engines. Must feel good to ride an engine you put together from sheer logic. He always aggravated my grandfather who didn't believe that things are better because of science, took cold baths and when he lost his hunting license he became vegetarian and cultivated beautiful garden. But thats also method.

I wonder, is the seasons, the way heat and moisture are distributed over time, also a method? Because it brings forth plants, and allows for all this complex lawless machinery. Anyway lets fuck laws and hail method.

Bruce Lee was a helluva philosopher (actually he wanted to be recognized for his mind more than his body) and he said "let what works be testament for what's right." Of course, he was referring to fighting style, but it's applicable anywhere.

Or let it be your own authority at least.Trust can be an appeal to oneself. Okay I trust this is going to go well, so Ill just do the best Ill be able to and its going to be fine. Thats the only trust I ever really had that was proven true. I dont "trust" that the Sun comes up. I just am not surprised when it does.

You have to trust yourself because if you don't, then you can't even trust your mistrust of yourself.

Maybe the only way something can follow from lawlessness is by setting itself as the law. Like a straight line escaping a black hole. But how can that happen?

Energy radiates from black holes as hawking radiation. Actually, it's very hard to enter a black hole since most things are accelerated, ripped apart, and flung across the universe. To actually enter inside, you'd have to be on a straight line trajectory with the center and have a lot of luck not to get knocked off course.

Yeah I don't think straight lines exist inside of black holes. But also no laws.

What's a straight line? It's the shortest direct between two points, but since an airplane can't fly through the earth, the shortest distance is a curved line on the surface of a sphere. I don't think straight lines exist. I'm not referring to segments, but lines with infinite lengths. Those types of lines are really circles with very large diameters. Afterall, a circle with infinite radius is a straight line (curvature of zero).

By the way if blackholes get created by a lot of stellar mass collapsing, then they are really well balanced out through spacetime for not crashing into each other and sucking all mass into a giant hole.

The distances are so vast that when 2 galaxies collide, no stars are expected to impact each other. That's what the astronomers on the youtube videos say. It's mindblowing!

But yeah, laws exist because there are no laws saying otherwise. If we're in the jungle, the biggest guy makes the law. The solar system formed of no laws and now it's the law. It's the golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules.

Great discussion.

Yup, it's a lot of fun. Now I need to go do some chores because I sat here too long lol

Thanks man, I will be checking these evidences, and Ill get back to you on the subject.For me Ive got a satisfied feeling about the whole business with laws and rules, I figure we figured it out, by maybe what James calls Definitional Logic.Trying to find definitions that work both ways. So this definition of law is very good where it both explains law and un-law.

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. ~ Владимир Ильич Ульянов Ленин

It's fun to discover how one ought to live because invariably it's discovered that one ought to live in a way that is fun, otherwise what is the purpose of living? "Fun" is just a placeholder for the purposeless.

iambiguous wrote:Of course "fun" here [in an essentially meaningless No God world] is no less an existential contraption.

Serendipper wrote: No, I don't think it's either existential nor a contraption, but the opposite of. It's the non-existence of a contraption. It's complete mindlessness and complete lack of purpose. It's not a tool to employ mindlessness, but the absence of tools.

But: Only when we bring these obtuse "general descriptions" out into a world in which flesh and blood human beings use the word "fun" in particular contexts for particular reasons can we explore the limitations of the tools that philosophers use in discussing it way, way up in what I deem to be the clouds of scholastic abstraction.

Thus:

What is construed to be "fun" for one particular "I", may well be anything but "fun" for another.

Serendipper wrote: True, but the condition of purposelessness is the same for each unique activity.

Suppose Jack has "fun" torturing animals. His purpose could be to exorcise the pain inflicted on him by others, or it might be just to entertain himself.

How then do philosophers/ethicists pin this behavior down morally?

Again, I may well not be understanding your point. Let's illustrate it using this example.

So we are still faced with estsablishing rules of behavior in any particular human community such that these rules become the existential embodiment of one or another complex combination of 1] right makes might 2] might makes right and 3] moderation, negotiation and compromise.

Serendipper wrote: I'm not sure the rule of "no rules" is itself a rule if no thought is ever given to the establishment of such a rule. One who lives without rules never considers whether there should be rules.

The point is that human interactions precipitate conflicts when wants and needs themselves come into conflict. How then is the thought put into the rules of behavior not an existential contraption rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts? Or the thought put into the choice not to have any rules at all?

All the time making the assumption that with regard to causality here, some measure of human autonomy exists?

Which, from my frame of mind, are embedded historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

How then is this not applicable to you when in the course of living your life a conflict erupts around the understanding what is "fun"?

But then this part:

Now, if "human freedom" here is essentially a self-delusion rooted in a mind rooted in a brain rooted in laws immutably applicable to all matter, then nothing that any of us post here was ever going to be anything other than that which it could only ever have been: what in fact it is. Period.

Serendipper wrote: I have a different comment this time around. I'm inclined to believe that free will exists to the extent that it's only restrained by probability of outcome instead of "set-in-stone" determination. The "will" is a desire that is manufactured of what exists "now" as a feedback in influencing (but not determining) the outcome of what will exist in the future.

I think there is a will and I think it has certain freedoms since nothing is 100% determined. The will is an illusion to the extent that it's a product of the stuff in this universe instead of being something abstractly and objectively real (objectively real is an oxymoron anyway).

Which justs takes me back to the gap between what you are inclined to believe about it here and now and your capacity to demonstrate that all other rational men and women are obligated to believe it in turn.

And while it is certainly "fun" to speculate about it, what is actually at stake here is the extent to which anything that we think, feel and do will ever be other than that which we were always going to think, feel and do.

And all we can do is to take our own "existential leap" to a frame of mind "here and now" rooted at least in part in dasein.

And what does this reflect but the gap between what you think you know about it here and now and what just some of the thinking that others have put into it is. So, what are the odds that your assumptions/assessments about it above and below come closest to the "whole truth" about it?

What we deem to be "purposeful" reasons for doing what we do may well be but the illusion of purpose ontologically rooted in the purposelessness of matter unfolding only as it ever could have going back to...to what exactly?

Well, to, among other things, those "unknown unknowns" embedded in Rumsfeld's Law.

Then [from my frame of mind] it's back up into the stratosphere of abstraction:

Serendipper wrote: If you truly feel there is no "right thing to do", then what you do cannot be predicated on what is "right". You just do what you do because that is what you do. Self reflection on the matter is taking an engineering view of the universe that everything must have a purpose.

And yet, over and again, I note that even this assumption is no less an existential contraption.

Serendipper wrote: I think the existential contraption is in trying to understand anything: it's the gnosia instead of the agnosia (conceptual vs the nonconceptual (faith)). Do you beat your heart by existential contraption? You have no concept (gnosia) how you beat your heart, but you just do it (agnosia). Likewise in living.

What on earth does this mean? Let's focus in on a particular purpose that a particular individual might have in a particular context.

For example, my own purpose here at ILP is to find an argument that might persuade me that with respect to the existential relationship between identity, conflicting goods and political power it can be demonstrated that being down in the hole that I am in is not a reasonable frame of mind. That there is a way up out of it. Now, in a wholly determined universe my purpose here is in itself no different from that beating heart. I think that I am acting with some degree of autonomy here but that may well be -- essentially, mechanistically, materially, phenomenologically, ontologically etc. -- an illusion.

But how can I then attempt to know this for sure when this attempt in and of itself may be no less determined by the immutable laws of matter.

How can I examine a reality here that "I" am inherently a part of? Just one more domino here and now toppling over onto you toppling over onto me.

With "purpose" only possible if teleologically there is a God.

There may well be the right thing to do.

Serendipper wrote: What's right is relative to a goal, which is arbitrary.

What goal in what context construed from what point of view? And "arbitrary" in what sense? Let's flesh this out.

Instead [in my view] you continue to just assert things. Things like this:

Serendipper wrote: If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe. Things that exist relative to us cannot exist outside this universe. Things outside this universe could not be things we could interact with or have knowledge of; if we could, those things would not be outside our universe.

A world of words. Truth revolving tautologically, circularly around the meaning that you give to words that make contact with nothing other than more words. You "posit" things:

Serendipper wrote: I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

Posit: assume as a fact; put forward as a basis of argument.

[my emphasis]

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Serendipper prioritizes fun.Iambiguous prioritizes trying to find out if there is a solution to conflicting goods.

This leads them to interact with people in certain ways.

Iambiguous thinks he, currently, has no way to know if either of these prioritizations is damaging or good, etc.

Yet his dialogue with Serendippier looks just like any conflicting goods dialogue.You think you know something and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Serendipper prioritizes fun.Iambiguous prioritizes trying to find out if there is a solution to conflicting goods.

Well, if someone's idea of having fun results in a set of priorities aimed at making your own life a miserable fucking hell, does that or does that not generally revolve around conflicting goods?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Iambiguous thinks he, currently, has no way to know if either of these prioritizations is damaging or good, etc.

No, he speculates that the priorities subscribed to by the guy who makes your life a miserable fucking hell are deemed good precisely because they result in making your life a miserable fucking hell.

So, cue the philosophers/ethicists to straighten it all out?

Or maybe the "pragmatists"?

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Yet his dialogue with Serendippier looks just like any conflicting goods dialogue.You think you know something and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position.

for some reason.

Or bringing this down to earth:

"You think you know something about abortion and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position."

No, I don't keep conflicting with what he thinks he knows about abortion just for the sake of sustaining the conflict. I conflict with it because what he thinks he knows about abortion [the morality of it] is not at all what others think.

Their idea of priorities here might revolve entirely around bringing the fetus out of the womb and into the world with the rest of us. While the priorities of others revolve entirely around allowing women to choose to abort it instead.

So, I ponder, how are these conflicting priorities not embedded existentially in dasein out in a world of conflicting goods ultimately resolved by who has the actual power to enforce one set of behaviors over another.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Serendipper prioritizes fun.Iambiguous prioritizes trying to find out if there is a solution to conflicting goods.

Well, if someone's idea of having fun results in a set of priorities aimed at making your own life a miserable fucking hell, does that or does that not generally revolve around conflicting goods?

Sigh, not relevent. Neither you nor Seredipper can demonstrate objectively that what you prioritize is not evil. Yet, you seem to think his prioritization is problematic, but yours is not.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Iambiguous thinks he, currently, has no way to know if either of these prioritizations is damaging or good, etc.

No, he speculates that the priorities subscribed to by the guy who makes your life a miserable fucking hell are deemed good precisely because they result in making your life a miserable fucking hell.

You said no, but then said something that seems irrelevent. It also seems like an appeal to what you think are obvious bad consequences. But you have no idea if they are.

So, cue the philosophers/ethicists to straighten it all out?

Or maybe the "pragmatists"?

You seem to be a hammer seeing nails. Try to respond to what I post.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Yet his dialogue with Serendippier looks just like any conflicting goods dialogue.You think you know something and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position.

for some reason.

Or bringing this down to earth:

Bringing this down to earth? what are you talking about. I responded to a specific interaction between two humans, you and Serendipper. You judged his prioritization of fun as bad, though not in those words, and 'demonstrated' this by pointing out that somebody's idea of fun could be sadistic. My post was as down to earth as possible, a direct reference to a concrete interaction between two people where you judged the other, not seeming to realize the beam in your own eye, nor that you were appealing to moral judgments about the bad possiblities of having fun, which a nihilist cannot do and not be a hypocrite.

"You think you know something about abortion and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position."

No, I don't keep conflicting with what he thinks he knows about abortion just for the sake of sustaining the conflict. I conflict with it because what he thinks he knows about abortion [the morality of it] is not at all what others think.

You are bringing in abortion. I responded to your judgment of his prioritization of fun.

This may seem obvious to you, but when people have discussions like this, in philosophy forums, just because they challenge one thread of your argument, it does not mean that your entire position is the focus and relevent in your response. The specific point being responded to is the issue.

So, I ponder, how are these conflicting priorities not embedded existentially in dasein out in a world of conflicting goods ultimately resolved by who has the actual power to enforce one set of behaviors over another.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the act of judgment on your part that I specifically and clearly responded to. Everyone's posts remind you of your main thesis and it is as if the entire structure must be proven wrong if one criticizes a portion of your arguments or your interactions.

You are a living person in interaction with other people, saying specific things, making specific arguments. Your acts and statements and judgements can be looked at in relation to your nihilism, for example, and be found wanting. You react to these criticisms, often, as if they are failures to demonstrate objective morals. That is confused. You can have been hypocritical, made poor arguments, judged in ways that are not consistent with your nihilism, not responded to points made etc.

Despite all your talk about your potential to be wrong, how your judgments are affected by dasein, how you may have existential contraptions

not once have I seen you admit that an argument you made was hypocritical or fallacious.

Not once.

So you are willing to admit that you might be wrong about anything, but you never manage to notice that you yourself can see you made a logical error or a hypocritical statement or responded not to the point being made.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Serendipper prioritizes fun.Iambiguous prioritizes trying to find out if there is a solution to conflicting goods.

Well, if someone's idea of having fun results in a set of priorities aimed at making your own life a miserable fucking hell, does that or does that not generally revolve around conflicting goods?

Sigh, not relevent. Neither you nor Seredipper can demonstrate objectively that what you prioritize is not evil. Yet, you seem to think his prioritization is problematic, but yours is not.

My point basically revolves around a context in which those unable to believe that philosophers are able to construct an argument that allows rational human beings to choose behaviors in sync with either vice or virtue, bump into those who insist that they have already accomplished this. In other words, citing one or another God, ideology, intellectual contraption or assessment of "natural" behavior.

How could I not construe my own argument here as problematic given that I readily acknowledge it is but one more existential contraption being posted on this thread?

I must be missing your point.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Iambiguous thinks he, currently, has no way to know if either of these prioritizations is damaging or good, etc.

No, he speculates that the priorities subscribed to by the guy who makes your life a miserable fucking hell are deemed good precisely because they result in making your life a miserable fucking hell.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You said no, but then said something that seems irrelevent. It also seems like an appeal to what you think are obvious bad consequences. But you have no idea if they are.

Again, my point is that the idea we think we have "in our head" about good or bad consequences is an existential contraption. But how on earth do mere mortals [in a No God world] demonstrate this?

I'm down in my hole, you take your "pragmatic" leap and the objectivists insist that any actual consequences are either inherently good or bad.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Yet his dialogue with Serendippier looks just like any conflicting goods dialogue.You think you know something and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position.

for some reason.

Or bringing this down to earth:

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Bringing this down to earth? what are you talking about. I responded to a specific interaction between two humans, you and Serendipper. You judged his prioritization of fun as bad, though not in those words, and 'demonstrated' this by pointing out that somebody's idea of fun could be sadistic.

My post was as down to earth as possible, a direct reference to a concrete interaction between two people where you judged the other, not seeming to realize the beam in your own eye, nor that you were appealing to moral judgments about the bad possiblities of having fun, which a nihilist cannot do and not be a hypocrite.

As I see it, this is just one more "general description" assessment.

From my frame of mind, reactions to abortion and to fun are the same thing --- value judgments derived from daseins interacting in a world of conflicting goods. What in particular does someone think is fun? And fun in what context? And what happens when his or her idea of having fun precipitates consequences that others don't see as fun at all?

Two strangers come together in a particular context. They may or may not share the same priorities with regard to abortion or to fun or to any other human behaviors that generate conflicts.

My own generic argument is applicable to all such interactuons. And the focus I zoom in on with the objectivists is the extent to which they have even considered the three components of my own existentual contraption.

How do they justify what they choose to do given the extent to which they are convinced that, using the tools of philosophy, ethicists can arrive at a conclusion in or around the vicinity of a moral obligation?

Of course this is your rendition of me here:

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You are a living person in interaction with other people, saying specific things, making specific arguments. Your acts and statements and judgements can be looked at in relation to your nihilism, for example, and be found wanting. You react to these criticisms, often, as if they are failures to demonstrate objective morals. That is confused. You can have been hypocritical, made poor arguments, judged in ways that are not consistent with your nihilism, not responded to points made etc.

And all I can do here is to note yet again how abstract this assessment is.

Invite us inside your head the next time you encounter someone who challenges one of your own value judgments. Or pick something from the news. Either way note for us how you engage challenges as a "pragmatist". Just how fractured and fragmented are you then? Just how comforted and consoled are you with the leap that you finally make? And how is this all less embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Despite all your talk about your potential to be wrong, how your judgments are affected by dasein, how you may have existential contraptions not once have I seen you admit that an argument you made was hypocritical or fallacious.

Note to others:

What am I missing here? To admit that my argument is hypocritical would seem to suggest there is an argument that can be made by me about conflicting goods. An argument which I then refuse to honor.

To admit that my argument is fallacious would seem to suggest that I am aware of an optimal rational truth here --- yet continue to argue for something that is clearly out of sync with it.

Or is he suggesting something else instead?

In any event, let's intertwine the discussion here in an actual existential context.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: So you are willing to admit that you might be wrong about anything, but you never manage to notice that you yourself can see you made a logical error or a hypocritical statement or responded not to the point being made.

Cite some actual instances of this relating to things that I post here at ILP. I am honestly unsure about the point that you are making.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

It's fun to discover how one ought to live because invariably it's discovered that one ought to live in a way that is fun, otherwise what is the purpose of living? "Fun" is just a placeholder for the purposeless.

iambiguous wrote:Of course "fun" here [in an essentially meaningless No God world] is no less an existential contraption.

Serendipper wrote: No, I don't think it's either existential nor a contraption, but the opposite of. It's the non-existence of a contraption. It's complete mindlessness and complete lack of purpose. It's not a tool to employ mindlessness, but the absence of tools.

But: Only when we bring these obtuse "general descriptions" out into a world in which flesh and blood human beings use the word "fun" in particular contexts for particular reasons can we explore the limitations of the tools that philosophers use in discussing it way, way up in what I deem to be the clouds of scholastic abstraction.

Sure, in discussing contraptions we will employ contraptions to do so, but the goal is not itself a contraption if there is no goal to the discussion because it's simply fun to be discussing something novel. We could say the goal of this discussion is ultimately to define what we ought to do, but what is the purpose of that? What is the purpose of knowing what we ought to do if what we ought to do isn't what we want to do? And if it is what we want to do, then what's the relevancy of knowing it is also what we ought to do? So knowing what we ought to do is irrelevant to what we will do because we always do what we want to do.

Thus:

What is construed to be "fun" for one particular "I", may well be anything but "fun" for another.

Serendipper wrote: True, but the condition of purposelessness is the same for each unique activity.

Suppose Jack has "fun" torturing animals. His purpose could be to exorcise the pain inflicted on him by others, or it might be just to entertain himself.

If we ask Jack why he is torturing animals his answer could only be "I don't know" because all fun activities have that answer, and if they didn't have that answer, then the activity would be purposeful instead of purposeless.

How then do philosophers/ethicists pin this behavior down morally?

However they want because morality is always relative.

Again, I may well not be understanding your point. Let's illustrate it using this example.

So we are still faced with estsablishing rules of behavior in any particular human community such that these rules become the existential embodiment of one or another complex combination of 1] right makes might 2] might makes right and 3] moderation, negotiation and compromise.

Serendipper wrote: I'm not sure the rule of "no rules" is itself a rule if no thought is ever given to the establishment of such a rule. One who lives without rules never considers whether there should be rules.

The point is that human interactions precipitate conflicts when wants and needs themselves come into conflict. How then is the thought put into the rules of behavior not an existential contraption rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts? Or the thought put into the choice not to have any rules at all?

I suspect that you're presupposing that there must be a rule to live by even if that rule is not to have rules. You're looking at it from the state of already having the knowledge of this dilemma and working backwards, but this isn't so from the point of view of a stupid animal that never gives thought to whether anything ought to be and yet coexists harmoniously with nature. The answer is to not consider the question.

The Rush song called Freewill says

You can choose a ready guide In some celestial voice If you choose not to decide You still have made a choice

I think there is a 3rd possibility. If there a god? Yes? No? Idk. I'm not choosing to not decide because I've recognized that deciding is not anything I'm capable of doing.

Which, from my frame of mind, are embedded historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

How then is this not applicable to you when in the course of living your life a conflict erupts around the understanding what is "fun"?

One cannot understand what is fun because it's trying to understand the nonexistence of something.

But then this part:

Now, if "human freedom" here is essentially a self-delusion rooted in a mind rooted in a brain rooted in laws immutably applicable to all matter, then nothing that any of us post here was ever going to be anything other than that which it could only ever have been: what in fact it is. Period.

Serendipper wrote: I have a different comment this time around. I'm inclined to believe that free will exists to the extent that it's only restrained by probability of outcome instead of "set-in-stone" determination. The "will" is a desire that is manufactured of what exists "now" as a feedback in influencing (but not determining) the outcome of what will exist in the future.

I think there is a will and I think it has certain freedoms since nothing is 100% determined. The will is an illusion to the extent that it's a product of the stuff in this universe instead of being something abstractly and objectively real (objectively real is an oxymoron anyway).

Which justs takes me back to the gap between what you are inclined to believe about it here and now and your capacity to demonstrate that all other rational men and women are obligated to believe it in turn.

I don't obligate anyone to believe, say, 1+1=2, but the purposeless is purposeless regardless of proclivities to hold otherwise beliefs.

And while it is certainly "fun" to speculate about it, what is actually at stake here is the extent to which anything that we think, feel and do will ever be other than that which we were always going to think, feel and do.

That's false from many perspectives: 1) I can't prove it, but the first thing that comes to mind is the impossibility of a feeling of dasein if the universe is a series of mechanistic dominoes determining outcomes. 2) That's inconsistent with QM experiements, which underpin the most substantiated theory in all of science. 3) What would be the purpose to this if everything were able to be known from the start? 4) There is just the one thing (universe) and so any self-inspection of the universe upon the universe will always yield randomness since the subject cannot be object to itself. Whatever the fundamental thing is will always be a mystery to us because there would be nothing to contrast it to, and if there were something to provide contrast, then it wouldn't be the fundamental thing.

And all we can do is to take our own "existential leap" to a frame of mind "here and now" rooted at least in part in dasein.

And what does this reflect but the gap between what you think you know about it here and now and what just some of the thinking that others have put into it is. So, what are the odds that your assumptions/assessments about it above and below come closest to the "whole truth" about it?

You know that's not a fair way to conduct an assessment of odds. If I flip a coin 100 times and get heads each time, what are the odds I will get tails next time? 50%. The odds will always be 50% because each event is it's own event which doesn't depend upon previous events. Likewise what the scholars do is independent from what I do and although there may be merit in standing on the shoulders of giants, I also don't need a lot of rubbish tossed in my paradigm box. We can't solve our problems using the same thinking as when we created them.

Many readers of vos Savant's column refused to believe switching is beneficial despite her explanation. After the problem appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine, most of them claiming vos Savant was wrong (Tierney 1991). Even when given explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still do not accept that switching is the best strategy (vos Savant 1991a). Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation demonstrating the predicted result (Vazsonyi 1999).

What we deem to be "purposeful" reasons for doing what we do may well be but the illusion of purpose ontologically rooted in the purposelessness of matter unfolding only as it ever could have going back to...to what exactly?

You're right that all purposefulness is ultimately without purpose, though we may not realize that.

Serendipper wrote: If you truly feel there is no "right thing to do", then what you do cannot be predicated on what is "right". You just do what you do because that is what you do. Self reflection on the matter is taking an engineering view of the universe that everything must have a purpose.

And yet, over and again, I note that even this assumption is no less an existential contraption.

Serendipper wrote: I think the existential contraption is in trying to understand anything: it's the gnosia instead of the agnosia (conceptual vs the nonconceptual (faith)). Do you beat your heart by existential contraption? You have no concept (gnosia) how you beat your heart, but you just do it (agnosia). Likewise in living.

What on earth does this mean?

It means to function mindlessly, like your heart.

For example, my own purpose here at ILP is to find an argument that might persuade me that with respect to the existential relationship between identity, conflicting goods and political power it can be demonstrated that being down in the hole that I am in is not a reasonable frame of mind. That there is a way up out of it. Now, in a wholly determined universe my purpose here is in itself no different from that beating heart. I think that I am acting with some degree of autonomy here but that may well be -- essentially, mechanistically, materially, phenomenologically, ontologically etc. -- an illusion.

Chance favors the prepared mind. You can arrange things to favor an outcome, but you cannot control which outcome you favor because the you that you think you are, does not exist (as evidenced by the lack of control over what you want). There is no hole because there is no one to be in a hole. There is no determinism because there is no one being determined.

But how can I then attempt to know this for sure when this attempt in and of itself may be no less determined by the immutable laws of matter.

Futility is an awesome teacher. The way to know something for sure is persistence. The fool who persists in his folly will become wise. The key is the persistence, for if you abandon the quest halfway, then you've concluded nothing. You must take it all the way until futility is realized and only then will you know for sure.

How can I examine a reality here that "I" am inherently a part of? Just one more domino here and now toppling over onto you toppling over onto me.

And not knowing how it will turnout is fun. If your reply could be known, there would be no point. So it is only the purposelessness that gives purpose to the whole thing.

With "purpose" only possible if teleologically there is a God.

Something sapient, anyway.

There may well be the right thing to do.

Serendipper wrote: What's right is relative to a goal, which is arbitrary.

What goal in what context construed from what point of view? And "arbitrary" in what sense? Let's flesh this out.

You could pick any goal to become attached to. Suppose you're frustrated that you cannot fly despite flapping your arms maddeningly. Anything could be a goal; it's completely arbitrary.

Instead [in my view] you continue to just assert things. Things like this:

Serendipper wrote: If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe. Things that exist relative to us cannot exist outside this universe. Things outside this universe could not be things we could interact with or have knowledge of; if we could, those things would not be outside our universe.

A world of words. Truth revolving tautologically, circularly around the meaning that you give to words that make contact with nothing other than more words. You "posit" things:

If we define words, with what words are we going to define the words that define the words?

In the game of Vish (short for vicious circle), players compete to find circularity in dictionary definitions.[1] Irish mathematician and physicist, John Lighton Synge, invented the multi-player, refereed game to emphasize the circular reasoning implicit in the defining process of any standard dictionary.

ProcedureEach of the players is given a copy of the same standard dictionary;The referee gives each a slip of paper with the same word (found in this dictionary) written on each slip—word chosen so that it has synonyms in its definition, but (preferably) the definition of any synonym does not (in that dictionary) list a synonym which is the originally assigned word;At "Go!", each looks up the assigned word, finds a synonym, looks that up, finds a synonym, etc.;The first player to be led, by this synonymous process, back to the originally assigned word cries "Vish!" and wins the game (unless his opponent successfully challenges the procedure of the alleged winner).

Serendipper wrote: I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

Posit: assume as a fact; put forward as a basis of argument.

[my emphasis]

What's wrong with positing?

Claim: If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe.

Proof: There is only one thing because if there were two things, then we'd have to propose a mechanism by which the one thing could exist relative to the other thing, and by doing so, we will have joined the two things back into one thing and we're back to square one. So there can only be one thing and if there is a god, he is part of the one thing.

Claim: Things that exist relative to us cannot exist outside this universe.

Proof: There is no outside the universe.

Claim: Things outside this universe could not be things we could interact with or have knowledge of; if we could, those things would not be outside our universe.

Proof: See the two-things proof above.

Claim: I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

Proof: Randomness exists. If many Graham's numbers of random events determined what we see today, then you'd need an eternity to reproduce it by rewinding and starting over (not really an eternity, but a number so big I don't want to risk understating it by naming it).

You could have just asked for me to substantiate my claims instead of making a thing of it lol

If you call me on conjecture, I'll own up to it or substantiate it. This is just fun, so there's nothing at stake.

To admit that my argument is hypocritical would seem to suggest there is an argument that can be made by me about conflicting goods. An argument which I then refuse to honor.

To admit that my argument is fallacious would seem to suggest that I am aware of an optimal rational truth here --- yet continue to argue for something that is clearly out of sync with it.

Let's go with this.

The sequence should be :

You make an argument.

Someone points out an error with it. (He/she points out a rational truth. It need not be "optimal".)

You acknowledge that your argument was faulty and change it in future or you stop using it. (You become aware of the rational truth. You react appropriately.)

Instead, this is what happens:

You make an argument.

Someone points out an error with it.

You dismiss it as an existential contraption.orYou claim not to understand the post.orYou claim the post does not address your points. orYou claim that the post confirms what you have been saying.orYou ask for a specific context. (Even when the post referred to a specific context.)orYou post your personal timeline. (Yet again)orYou post your interests. (Yet again.)

Then you continue to use the same argument. Because there is never anything wrong with anything that you write.

Karpel Tunnel wrote:Serendipper prioritizes fun.Iambiguous prioritizes trying to find out if there is a solution to conflicting goods.

My purpose for being here is: I don't know; it's fun. (Not quite true as I have ulterior motives, but fulfilling those purposes that I've created for myself is fun).

I don't know why it's fun, but this is what I like to do. Why would I do something that I don't like to do? The only way is if I had a purpose for this that led to fun on a more macro scale. Like, maybe I could learn some things to impress people and impressing people is fun. It seems hollow though, since people don't care and learning is a lot of work. The more I know, the more likely I am to alienate myself from the herd anyway. Ignorance is bliss!

People ask why they should study philosophy and I say "you shouldn't!" because if it's fun, then what I think wouldn't be of consequence anyway and if you have to ask, then apparently it's not fun.

iambiguous wrote:Again, my point is that the idea we think we have "in our head" about good or bad consequences is an existential contraption. But how on earth do mere mortals [in a No God world] demonstrate this?

I'm down in my hole, you take your "pragmatic" leap and the objectivists insist that any actual consequences are either inherently good or bad.

The concept of good and bad are foreign concepts to someone who doesn't see things in terms of good and bad like UV light is a foreign concept to nonavian beings who can't see the color ultra-orange.

Debating whether good and bad exist is a nonsensical debate since good and bad have to be presupposed to be true before consideration could be given to the notion of whether good and bad exist. So good and bad must be axiomized, taken on faith, in order to have the debate, which is silly.

Good and bad are nothing more than desires in relation to arbitrary goals: if goals are attained, then that's good; if not, then that's bad.

The nonexistence of good and bad is not an existential contraption anymore than the nonexistence of visual receptors and neurological architecture to see UV light is a contraption. Things that do not exist are not contraptions.

iambiguous wrote:From my frame of mind, reactions to abortion and to fun are the same thing --- value judgments derived from daseins interacting in a world of conflicting goods. What in particular does someone think is fun? And fun in what context?

Fun is not a thing, but the absence of a thing (purpose).

Fun is not value judgements, but absence of judgement.

Much like presupposing good and bad in order to debate good and bad, we cannot presuppose purpose in order to debate purpose. You're stuck on making a rule of no-rules, but that's only because you're considering the question from a top-down perspective, which is a presupposition of purpose. It's teleology like asking what is the purpose of a butterfly having an "eye" on it's wing, then saying because predators don't eat them, as if it were designed to do just that, but that's isn't what happened. What happened was nature just did whatever (fun), with no purpose in mind, and some butterflies happened to survive.

If the whole thing were designed and everything had a purpose to fulfill, then there would be no purpose to it. Why watch a show that you know how it ends? There is no purpose to that. So the lack of purpose gives everything a purpose.

iambiguous wrote:How could I not construe my own argument here as problematic given that I readily acknowledge it is but one more existential contraption being posted on this thread?

Yes, that is precisely my point. But if we look at your behavior, we see you treating his prioritization of fun as problematic AND YOU DO THIS BY SHOWING how it could be problematic. You use an argument which is a kind of appeal to the what most people would think are horrible consequences - in other words an appeal to what most people think is EVIL and this is ironic given you are a nihilist. But more importantly, you never show precisely how YOUR POSITION and behavior might lead to bad or evil consequences.

So you (as a rule!) make a disclaimer about yours, but you get into specific demonstrations and arguments about ALL OTHER POSITIONS you encounter. IOW you treat other people's priorities differently, often using charged specific examples of the bad consequences they might or will lead to. You never show how your prioritization might lead to specific bad consequences. You treat your values very differently from other people's values. All the while claiming you have no idea are so conflicted and fragmented. And yet the same values, for example compromise, negotiation and moderation keep coming up. Not others, despite your fragmentation. And demonstrate what bad consequences they might lead to.

A pro forma abstract disclaimer is not the same as what you did with fun, and with other people's priorities. SAying: Of course I might be wrong. Of course my ideas are affected by Dasein. is not the same treatment you give to other ideas.

You have a sense of The Good, it's just, like many objectivists, consider it open to revision. A fragmented person does not keep repeating the same goods. A fragmented person would see the potential problems of negotiation and compromise also. And so on. A nihilist does not think there is a good, or something we ought to do. A nihilist does not have the 'I think this is good' contraption. But you do. A nihilist does not say, I think this is good, but it's a contraption. The nihilist does not think this is good and that is bad. The nihilist obviously will have preferences, unless he or she is extremely depressed. But not notions of the good with disclaimers. You never seem to notice this contradiction between your behavior and your philosophy, even when it is pointed out using different approaches by different posters.

Again, my point is that the idea we think we have "in our head" about good or bad consequences is an existential contraption. But how on earth do mere mortals [in a No God world] demonstrate this?

So then why do you do this with his fun prioritization as if it is obvious that this fun priortization could lead to bad consequences.

I'm down in my hole, you take your "pragmatic" leap and the objectivists insist that any actual consequences are either inherently good or bad.

I don't take any fucking leap. I do not add on all the problematic tasks and self-relations you add on. As explained elsewhere.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: Yet his dialogue with Serendippier looks just like any conflicting goods dialogue.You think you know something and I think that's bad but can't prove it. It might be just another contraption on my part. But then I'll keep conflicting with your position.

for some reason.

Or bringing this down to earth:

No, sorry, you are out in the clouds. I always refer to specific actions on your part, ones that are easy to document and find, since they are posted here. Specific interpersonal acts. At best most of your examples are universal (say, abortion) not dealing with specific cases and having nothing to do with any of us here. At worst you speak in the most abstract terms in paragraphs you have rewritten thousands of times.

Why don't you actually come down to earth, tell us about a specific situation in your life where you encountered conflicting goods. Not in the newspaper, not out of your head, not with Trump and his opponents, but with you actually involved. I can't remember you actually presenting a real life example, and yet you have the nerve to constantly accuse others of being abstract and not doing this. I know. I have and yet you keep asking me to do this as if I haven't.

As I see it, this is just one more "general description" assessment.

which, if it were true, would be the same as what you do as a rule. But it is not true since it had to do with a specific act, you critique of his fun idea, in a specific post. IOW a single example of a real life intereraction between you are another perosn here.

Karpel Tunnel wrote: You are a living person in interaction with other people, saying specific things, making specific arguments. Your acts and statements and judgements can be looked at in relation to your nihilism, for example, and be found wanting. You react to these criticisms, often, as if they are failures to demonstrate objective morals. That is confused. You can have been hypocritical, made poor arguments, judged in ways that are not consistent with your nihilism, not responded to points made etc.

And all I can do here is to note yet again how abstract this assessment is.

Sure, but I gave a specific example as described above. I could give others from interactions with me or Phyllo etc. But when you respond to these, and generally you do not, you simply restate your position, you call them abstract, when in fact they are much more concrete than your abortion issue.

Invite us inside your head the next time you encounter someone who challenges one of your own value judgments. Or pick something from the news. Either way note for us how you engage challenges as a "pragmatist". Just how fractured and fragmented are you then? Just how comforted and consoled are you with the leap that you finally make? And how is this all less embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

I've done this. I wrote a specific case where I defended another man in a group. I described the conflicting values and how I coming from my preferences tried to affect change. It made absolutely no difference to you. You started talking about my leaps not long after that. At first somewhat dismissively, then it seems with almost an apology. But it did not make the slightest difference. SO STOP ASKING ME TO DO THIS. I did this, with a concrete situation, the day after it happened in my life. And stop telling me I make leaps. I make less leaps than you do. I do not make the leap that I somehow must come up with a rational argument that is also objectively true to convince the world of what the good is, if this is possible. I do notmake the leap that I can only act in the world in a wide set of contexts if I know what I ought to do. I do not make the leap that your entire project (which your own nihilism should make seem most likely futile) is something I must carry out.

You seem to think having wants and feeling things that lead to actions and choices requires leaps. Dogs manage without philosophies and leaps. Now, sure, I sometimes feel torn, sometimes I am confused, but it is only through abstract thinking that one, as a rule, cannot takes steps to make things more like one wants. To try at least. For you it is a leap, some mental contraption. But animals, lacking our vast array of mental gadgetry, manage to do this. Your hole is due to an excess of contraptions, not a lack of them. And just to repeat: of course, I get confused. Of course I can feel conflicted both about means and goals. But unlike you I do not think I must solve enormous epistemological and universal moral behavior issues to live my life. You have nearly killed the animal in you with all your contraptions.

Without this strangely moral looking huge project, I handle things much more as you like handle your shopping. I try to achieve what I want for myself and those I care about and for what I care about.

Note to others:

What am I missing here? To admit that my argument is hypocritical would seem to suggest there is an argument that can be made by me about conflicting goods. An argument which I then refuse to honor.

To admit that my argument is fallacious would seem to suggest that I am aware of an optimal rational truth here --- yet continue to argue for something that is clearly out of sync with it.

Or is he suggesting something else instead?

Amazing. Imabiguous: One can be hypocritical by acting in contradiction with one's philosophy. You often say that objectivist run from you because you might upset the comfort and consolation offered by their objectivism. Look at what you wrote above. In the category of hypocrisy it did not, oddly, occur to you that hypocrisy is OFTEN, IN FACT USUALLY, brought up when someone's behavior does not align with their philosophy. While expressing your incredulity you did not even consider this kind of hypocrisy. And this in a context where I was criticizing a specific communicative act in relation to Serendipper.

Is it possible that for emotional reasons you avoid really noticing what I am saying. You often criticize the objectivists by saying that they run from you for emotional reasons. Well, I think that has to be the case here with you. I know you will say, yes, this is possible. But can you actually look at and see what you are running from, why you often to not notice things? Why you keep asking for me to give a concrete example in the world of conflicting goods what I do. Even though I have done this. You say below that you honestly do not understand. I believe you. I don't think you are fucking with me. I think there are things you do not want to look at. I don't know for sure this is based on fear. That seems most likley. But I do know that as a rule you just do not notice certain things.

In any event, let's intertwine the discussion here in an actual existential context.

Cite some actual instances of this relating to things that I post here at ILP. I am honestly unsure about the point that you are making.

I believe you. You cannot see what might be problematic even if Phyllo and I place specific concrete examples right in front of you. I did it again in this post. I have done this many times. Most of the time you are not willing to even look at your own behavior. I mention it and you repeat your general position on dasein conflicting values, without ever responding to the critique of specfiic instances of your behavior that are hypocritical int he context of your nihilism. Other times when a specific act is pointed out you say that you have also said your conclusions are existential contraptions. But when it is pointed out that you relate differently to the existential contraptions of others, you do not respond or repeat your general position. When you conclude that something is good, you cannot seem to notice that you are no longer a nihilist, since for you an objectivist is only someone who believes their values are 100% correct. But this is not the case. A nihilist cannot draw a conclusion about the good, even a tentative one. He does no believe the good exists. And this was pointed out as a specific instance, an act in your posting. A down to earth example, first pointed out by Phyllo, where you obviously and clearly think that comprimise and negotiation are good. When it is pointed out this is a contradiction, you say that it may be a contraption on your part. Fine, but you are no longer a nihilist if you draw conclusions about what is good. You just open to revision. Scientists are objectivists about scientific knowledge, but they consider ALL conclusions open to revision, it is part and parcel with scientific epistemology.

And yes, the above includes abstract language, but I am also referring to specific concrete cases involved your interaction with specific people here, as I did in the first example at the beginning of this post. I HAVE ALSO DONE WHAT SINCE DOING IT YOU HAVE CONTINUED TO ASK ME TO DO OVER AND OVER given a specific example of how I navigate the world of conflicting goods.

YET OVER AND AND OVER YOU ASK ME TO DO THIS as if I haven't.YET OVER AND OVER YOU ACCUSE ME OF BEING ABSTRACT when over and over I build posts around specific concrete examples involving you here interacting with other people, which is much more concrete than your abortion issue.

I think the fascination with all this and I'll have to check with Phyllo for his takeis that you are obviously intelligent but cannot see the nose on your face even when I hold up a mirror.I shouldn't be surprised. But I am.

Serendipper wrote:We could say the goal of this discussion is ultimately to define what we ought to do, but what is the purpose of that? What is the purpose of knowing what we ought to do if what we ought to do isn't what we want to do? And if it is what we want to do, then what's the relevancy of knowing it is also what we ought to do? So knowing what we ought to do is irrelevant to what we will do because we always do what we want to do.

In any particular community of human beings, wants and needs come into conflict. As a consequence, there are always going to be instances in which what you want to do becomes entangled in that which others insist you ought to do. Why? Because if you do what you want to do [for "fun" or not] it can piss the others off. So, folkways, mores, laws -- rules of behavior -- are established to sustain the least dsyfunctional set of interactions. Or [perhaps] to sustain what some insist are the must "just" interactions.

Predicated either on one or another variation of might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.

My point then is only to suggest that these rules of behavior are largely social constructs rooted in history, culture, and individual experiences. Rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

As opposed to one or another religious, ideological, deontological or natural assessment of the is/ought world.

Suppose Jack has "fun" torturing animals. His purpose could be to exorcise the pain inflicted on him by others, or it might be just to entertain himself.

Serendipper wrote:If we ask Jack why he is torturing animals his answer could only be "I don't know" because all fun activities have that answer, and if they didn't have that answer, then the activity would be purposeful instead of purposeless.

Maybe, but Jack's answer is still embedded in dasein out in a world where some are able to rationalize torturing animals while others insist that it is necessarily immoral to do so.

Okay, Mr. Philosopher, settle this for us.

The point is that human interactions precipitate conflicts when wants and needs themselves come into conflict. How then is the thought put into the rules of behavior not an existential contraption rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts? Or the thought put into the choice not to have any rules at all?

Serendipper wrote:I suspect that you're presupposing that there must be a rule to live by even if that rule is not to have rules. You're looking at it from the state of already having the knowledge of this dilemma and working backwards, but this isn't so from the point of view of a stupid animal that never gives thought to whether anything ought to be and yet coexists harmoniously with nature. The answer is to not consider the question.

On the other hand, what does this really have to do with the point that I'm making? Rules of behavior are either existential contraptions [more rather than less] or are derived from one or another assessment of moral obligation derived from one or another philosophical argument. Kant et al.

Or, sure, it might all be derived from a God, the God, my God.

As for "fun" here, something in particular is deemed to be fun by a particular individual in a particular context. She tells us why this is fun to her and we react. And this in my view revolves more around "I" as an existential contraption; rather than the "real me" said to be in sync with the "right way" to have fun.

And while it is certainly "fun" to speculate about it, what is actually at stake here is the extent to which anything that we think, feel and do will ever be other than that which we were always going to think, feel and do.

Serendipper wrote:That's false from many perspectives: 1) I can't prove it, but the first thing that comes to mind is the impossibility of a feeling of dasein if the universe is a series of mechanistic dominoes determining outcomes.

You can't prove it. Exactly. We simply do not know where the idea of human autonomy fits [wholly] into whatever it is that is "behind" the existence of existence itself.

But if human consciouness is but more matter inherently in sync with the mechanistic rules of matter, who is to say what is possible or impossible here?

Then [for me] back to this:

I have these absolutely extraordinary dreams in which whole worlds play out in my head. All manufactured by my brain even though "in the dream" I seem as real as I do during the hours that I am awake.

Serendipper wrote:2) That's inconsistent with QM experiements, which underpin the most substantiated theory in all of science.

QM is a world that we have just barely begun to explore. Or are you speculating that a 1,000 years from know we will understand it in the same way?

Serendipper wrote:3) What would be the purpose to this if everything were able to be known from the start?

What's that got to do with the illusion of purpose in a wholly determined universe? The mystery is still the nature of human consciousness itself. Surely, the most extraordinary matter so far. Then the part about God and sim worlds and solipsism and the multiverse.

Serendipper wrote:4) There is just the one thing (universe) and so any self-inspection of the universe upon the universe will always yield randomness since the subject cannot be object to itself.

What always boggles my mind here is how folks can actually say -- believe -- things like this: as though they did have access to all that would need to be known about the universe in order to fully explain it.

Yours [like mine] is still largely a "world of words". As you noted above, you can't "prove" any of it. So, lets just stick to the part about how, ontologically and teleologically, it is still largely all a "mystery" to us.

Though, by all means, we can have "fun" speculating about it. After all, it is all inherently fascinating. Or, sure, we can assign a purpose to it. Like mine: connecting the dots between what the universe is and how we ought to behave in it.

Assumming this is something that we can do "freely".

And as Rush noted above even not to choose is a choice. Only Rush was construed by many to be advocates of Ayn Rand. And with her each individual was free to think about everything in exactly the same manner that she did. The objective individual as it were.

And all we can do is to take our own "existential leap" to a frame of mind "here and now" rooted at least in part in dasein.

As for flipping coins and Monty Hall and PHDs and Marilyn vos Savant, all of these interactions either unfolded with some measure of human autonomy, or "free will" here is merely an illusion embedded in the mechanical fact that all of it was only ever going to or able to unfold exactly as it did.

...my own purpose here at ILP is to find an argument that might persuade me that with respect to the existential relationship between identity, conflicting goods and political power it can be demonstrated that being down in the hole that I am in is not a reasonable frame of mind. That there is a way up out of it. Now, in a wholly determined universe my purpose here is in itself no different from that beating heart. I think that I am acting with some degree of autonomy here but that may well be -- essentially, mechanistically, materially, phenomenologically, ontologically etc. -- an illusion.

Serendipper wrote: Chance favors the prepared mind. You can arrange things to favor an outcome, but you cannot control which outcome you favor because the you that you think you are, does not exist (as evidenced by the lack of control over what you want). There is no hole because there is no one to be in a hole. There is no determinism because there is no one being determined.

But I have no way of knowing if this exchange itself is not just more dominos toppling over onto each other. Dominos set up by God? Dominois set up by whatever brought into existence -- out of nothing at all? -- everything that there is?

Even feelings of "futility" -- or Vish -- may just be another manifestation of the beating heart.

Serendipper wrote: I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

Posit: assume as a fact; put forward as a basis of argument.

[my emphasis]

Serendipper wrote: What's wrong with positing?

Nothing. But my point is still the same: the extent to which what one posits is able to be demonstrated as that which all rational men and women are obligated to posit in turn.

And then the extent to which positing itself is or is not autonomous. Or, instead, autonomic. Like the beating heart.

Serendipper wrote: Claim: If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe.

Proof: There is only one thing because if there were two things, then we'd have to propose a mechanism by which the one thing could exist relative to the other thing, and by doing so, we will have joined the two things back into one thing and we're back to square one. So there can only be one thing and if there is a god, he is part of the one thing.

More words defining and defending more words. What God? In what particular universe? Impacting the things that I do in what particular way?

The claim and the proof going around and around in circles. Like the dog chasing its tail.

Same with all the other claims. Worlds consisting entirely of words yanked out of your head.

And here they revolve basically around relationships in the either/or world. Whereas from my frame of mind things like dasein and conflicting goods are relevant more in the is/ought world.

But: In a wholly determined universe this distinction in and of itself is just another illusion.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles